Recent Exclaim! Class of 2024 grads Nicolette & the Nobodies have announced their debut album, previewed today by timelessly wistful new single "Show Up."
The Long Way is due April 12 through ArtHaus. Press notes describe it as being a decade in the making, with Vietnamese-Canadian frontwoman Nicolette Hoang — the child of immigrants who moved to Guelph, ON, and opened an optician shop after the Vietnam War — not coming to country music until later in life.
“I had never envisioned myself in country,” Hoang remarked in a release. “Why would I? I had never seen anyone who looks like me in that world. But now that I’ve found my voice, I want to see what it has to say.”
One fateful karaoke night, she met the Nobodies: Ian Bain (guitar), Danny Fury (drums) and Emma Howarth-Withers (bass). “They named themselves, I swear,” the frontwoman added. “These are people who made me feel safe enough to create, who told the mean Nicolette in my mind to F herself. Our band exists because of the Nobodies.”
Of the '60s and '70s Nashville Sound-indebted lead single, she continued, “‘Show Up’ is a reckoning about coming to terms with loving someone that will never love you back. These moments are so painful and so drawn out that you’re just hanging on for any little thing to release you from it. The song is that last look over your shoulder when you are still convincing yourself they’re going to be standing there before you have to walk through that door.”
Watch the video for "Show Up," directed by Sarafina Bortolon-Vettor, below. Keep scrolling for the album tracklist and the band's upcoming tour dates supporting Sarah Shook & the Disarmers.
The Long Way:
1. Better Days
2. Rodeo
3. Don’t You Dare
4. Show Up
5. Ready or Not
6. Didn’t Know
7. Losing More
8. Wherever You Go
9. The Long Way
Nicolette & the Nobodies 2024 Tour Dates:
05/07 Toronto, ON - The Garrison
05/08 Montreal, QC - L’Esco
05/09 Portland, ME - One Longfellow Square
05/10 Gloucester, MA - The Cut
05/11 New Haven, CT - Cafe Nine
05/12 New York, NY - TV Eye